Abstract
The genetic method of history was favored by John Dewey and popularized by James Harvey Robinson as the New History. It was a critical analysis of intellectual history, undertaken with the intention of identifying the origin of an idea within a cultural context of common needs. Baconian scientific standards were imposed on inquiry. The method prescribed clearing away all previous presuppositions which were assumed to have grown out of a specific cultural context and then testing the stripped idea set for its clarity and value in present-day circumstances. What this really boiled down to was identification of mostly psychological communal needs, past and present, and comparison of contemporary social needs with those of the earlier epoch. William James’ emphasis on psychology had impressed Dewey so much that Dewey referred currents in intellectual history to human psychic needs and motives. According to Dewey, justification for beliefs is the actual foundation for all past philosophy. “It became the work of philosophy to justify on rational grounds the spirit, though not the form, of accepted beliefs and traditional customs.”1
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Notes
John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, ( New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1920 ), 18.
J.H. Robinson, The Mind in the Making, 3.
John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, 2.
Burtt, The Philosophy of Man as All-embracing Philosophy, The Philosophical Forum, Volume II, number 2, (Winter, 1970–71), 162.
Burtt, The Philosophy of Man as All-embracing Philosophy, The Philosophical Forum, Volume II, number 2, (Winter, 1970–71), 161.
Burtt, The Philosophy of Man as All-embracing Philosophy, The Philosophical Forum, Volume II, number 2, (Winter, 1970–71), 170.
Burtt, The Philosophy of Man as All-embracing Philosophy, The Philosophical Forum, Volume II, number 2, (Winter, 1970–71), 169.
J.H. Robinson, The Mind in the Making, ( New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 1921 ), 108.
Harvey Wish, Introduction to J.H. Robinson, The New History, (New York: Macmillan Co., originally published 1912, 1965 edition), ix.
Harvey Wish, Introduction to J.H. Robinson, The New History, (New York: Macmillan Co., originally published 1912, 1965 edition), xii.
Harvey Wish, Introduction to J.H. Robinson, The New History, (New York: Macmillan Co., originally published 1912, 1965 edition), xv.
John H. Randall, The Department of Philosophy in A History of the Faculty of Philosophy Columbia University, ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1957 ), 116.
John H. Randall, The Department of Philosophy in A History of the Faculty of Philosophy Columbia University, ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1957 ), 130
John H. Randall, The Department of Philosophy in A History of the Faculty of Philosophy Columbia University, ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1957 ), 127.
E.A. Burtt, My Path to Philosophy, Philosophy East and West, Volume 22, Number 4 (October 1972): 430.
Samuel Meyer, editor, Types of Thinking including A Survey of Greek Philosophy by John Dewey, (New York: Philosophical Library, 1984). Although Meyer claims this previously unpublished manuscript, documenting Dewey’s history of philosophy and comparison of the various schools, is new, the book seems to be a popularized version of Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920), Dewey’s most popular book. Richard J. Bernstein, writing for The Encyclopedia of Philosophy claims the work is based on the Japan/China lectures.
James Gutmann, John Herman Randall, Jr.: A Memoir of His Career at Columbia, 1915–1967 in Naturalism and Historical Understanding, Essays on the Philosophy of John Herman Randall, Jr., John P. Anton, editor, (New York: State University of New York Press), 284.
Howard Thurman, With Head and Heart, (New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), 44. I am indebted to Helen and Karl Schantz and Caroline and Frank Pineo of Ithaca, New York for leading me to this source.
John H. Randall, How Philosophy Uses Its Past, ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1963 ), 18.
Robinson resigned in 1919 to found the New School with Dewey and Beard, but Beard had resigned earlier, in 1917, to protest the firings of Professors J. M. Cattell and H.W. L Dana for their alleged support of pacifism. Joseph Freeman, An American Testament, ( New York: Octagon Books, 1973 ): 104–109.
J.H. Randall, Jr., Autobiographical Sketch preceding the essay, Historical Naturalism in American Philosophy Today and Tomorrow, Horace Kallan and Sidney Hook, editors, ( New York: Lee Furman, Inc., 1935 ), 411.
John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy, ( New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1920 ), 17.
J.H. Randall, Jr., The Department of Philosophy in A History of the Faculty of Philosophy Columbia University, 129.
John Dewey, How We Think, ( Boston, New York and Chicago: D.C. Heath, 1910 ), 6.
John Dewey, How We Think, ( Boston, New York and Chicago: D.C. Heath, 1910 ), 9.
John Dewey, How We Think, ( Boston, New York and Chicago: D.C. Heath, 1910 ), 12–13.
John Dewey, How We Think, ( Boston, New York and Chicago: D.C. Heath, 1910 ), 13.
Paul Kurtz, American Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, A Source book from Pragmatism to Philosophical Analysis, (New York and London: Macmillan Co., 1966 and 1968), 20.
E.A. Burtt, The Contemporary Significance of Newton’s Metaphysics in Isaac Newton 1642–1727, A Memorial Volume, edited for the Mathematical Association by W.J. Greenstreet, (London: G. Bell and Sons, Limited, 1927 ), 140.
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Villemaire, D.D. (2002). The Idealists: James Harvey Robinson and the Genetic Method of History, John Dewey and Reflective Thinking. In: E.A. Burtt, Historian and Philosopher. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 226. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1331-3_3
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